The Christian Civic League of Maine's Mike Hein calls Pam's House Blend: "a leading source of radical homosexual propaganda, anti-Christian bigotry, and radical transgender advocacy."
He is "praying that Pam Spaulding will "turn away from her wicked and sinful promotion of homosexual behavior."
(CCLM's web site, 10/15/07)
Ex-gay "Christian" activist James Hartline on Pam:
"I have been mocked over and over again by ungodly and unprincipled anti-christian lesbians."
(from "Six Years In Sodom: From The Journal Of James Hartline," 9/4/2006, written from the "homosexual stronghold" of Hillcrest in San Diego).
"Pam is a 'twisted lesbian sister' and an 'embittered lesbian' of the 'self-imposed gutteral experiences of the gay ghetto.'" -- 9/5/2008
Peter LaBarbera of Americans for Truth Against Homosexuality heartily endorses the Blend, calling Pam:
A "vicious anti-Christian lesbian activist." (Concerned Women for America's radio show [9:15], 1/25/07)
"A nutty lesbian blogger." (MassResistance radio show [16:25], 2/3/07)
Pam's House Blend always seems to find these sick f*cks. The area of the country she is in? The home state of her wife? I know, they are everywhere. Pam just does such a great job of bringing them out into the light.
--Impeach Bush
who monitors yours Bevis ?? Just thought I would drop you a line,so the rest of your life is not wasted.
Update:I needed to add a commentary from the Los Angeles Times to this sampling. It's from a black lesbian with a somewhat different take on Prop 8 than Pam's expressed. Below the fold, it's the last piece listed.
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As it's been mentioned in our blog, here at PHB and Bilerico we've been discussing race and Prop 8, as well as faith and Prop 8. To illustrate that there's a variety of post-mortems and stories on this from a really broad spectrum of perspectives, here's a sampling of some of those from a wide variety of sources:
Once you start the process of taking away other peoples' fundamental rights -- like food and water in a jail cell, or the right to drive and listen to whatever music you like -- you must ask yourself where to draw the line, and who will draw it? What -- and whose -- rights will be next on the chopping block?
As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "Injustice anywhere is injustice everywhere." You'd think that as Latinos, proud and strong and willing to fight for our own rights,- we'd refuse to turn against the "punier kid," wouldn't you?
That we might in fact stand up for that kid, tell the bullies to back off, the same way we told the bullies of racism and "the real America" to take a hike -- and in the process carried Obama to triumph.
"I call upon the supporters of same-sex marriage to live by their own words--and to refrain from discrimination against religion and to exercise tolerance for those who differ from them. I call upon them to accept the will of the people of California in the passage of Proposition 8."
[W]hat you helped achieve on Tuesday night goes far beyond upholding the sanctity of marriage in California. It also:
... helps protect millions of children from radical indoctrination in the homosexual lifestyle. In Massachusetts, legalized same-sex "marriage" quickly became the pretext for redefining marriage in the classroom, and it had already started in California, too.
... safeguards religious liberty in our most populous state. Wherever same-sex "marriage" has taken hold, religious freedom has begun to crumble. In Massachusetts, for example, Catholic Charities was forced to shut down its adoption agency because of their refusal to do gay adoptions.
I'm so pleased to be able to report to you the critical role that Focus on the Family played in securing this milestone victory. From the earliest strategic discussions ... to the monumental task of gathering a million-plus signatures ... to the campaign itself, Focus on the Family has been integrally involved.
Dozens of signs supporting Prop.8, the initiative to define marriage as only between a man and a woman in the California Constitution, were found Thursday morning arranged in the form of a swastika on the front lawn of a Roman Catholic church in Riverside, church and police officials say.
A parish secretary came to work Thursday morning and found 40 to 50 signs formed in the shape of a swastika at Our Lady of Perpetual Help at 5250 Central Ave., said John Andrews, spokesman for the Roman Catholic Diocese of San Bernardino.
Listen, you guys on the left may not like it but the government has the right to set the terms for marriage. In California that's done through a ballot initiative. It doesn't matter that you think it's wrong, it's been this way throughout history. Appealing to the founding fathers is ludicrous (as some on the left have done) because if they knew that this was going to be an issue, they would have been explicit in stating that marriage was between a man and woman. They would never have thought otherwise.
A researcher at a top conservative think tank in Washington says although the election of Barack Obama as president may signal a further left-ward political drift in the U.S., the success of ballot initiatives on Tuesday banning same-sex "marriage" indicates there is still widespread support for traditional marriage.
...Tom Messner, a visiting researcher at the Heritage Foundation, says attempts to repeal DOMA and legalize same-sex "marriage" threaten religious liberty.
"Once courts conclude that traditional marriage is a form of discrimination or bigotry, anyone who continues to believe that will be the equivalent of a bigot," he explains.
"They'll be considered to harbor irrational prejudices -- and that's really going to lead to three types of growing burdens in the institution or individual who continues to believe that marriage is [between] a man and a woman."
* Joe Solmonese of the HRC at Bilerico: You can't take this away from me - One gets as much interesting take from the comments as one does from the Op-Ed. From the Op-Ed:
As free and equal human beings, we were born with the right to equal families. The courts did not give us this right--they simply recognized it. And although California has ceased to grant us marriage licenses, our rights are not subject to anyone's approval. We will keep fighting for them. They are as real and as enduring as the love that moves us to form families in the first place. There are many roads to marriage equality, and no single roadblock will prevent us from ultimately getting there.
And yet there is no denying, as we pick ourselves up after losing this most recent, hard-fought battle, that we've been injured, many of us by neighbors who claim to respect us. We see them in the supermarkets, on the sidewalk, and think "how could you?"
By the same token, we know that we are moving in the right direction. In 2000, California voters passed Proposition 22 by a margin of 61.4% to 38.6%. On Tuesday, fully 48% of Californians rejected Proposition 8. It wasn't enough, but it was a massive shift. Nationally, although two other anti-marriage ballot measures won, Connecticut defeated an effort to hold a constitutional convention ending marriage, New York's state legislature gained the seats necessary to consider a marriage law, and FMA architect Marilyn Musgrave lost her seat in Congress. We also elected a president who supports protecting the entire community from discrimination and who opposes discriminatory amendments.
From the comments:
Rebecca Juro - Joe, I'm not going to bash you or HRC here (that stuff's all been said and to rehash it here would be redundant). However, I will point out one thing that I believe strikes to the very heart of the issues so many of us have with you and HRC:
"But make no mistake: I do not think we have to audition for equality. Rather, I believe that each and every one of us who has been hurt by this hateful ballot measure, and each and every one of us who is still fighting to be equal, has to confront the neighbors who hurt us. We have to say to the man with the Yes on 8 sign--you disrespected my humanity, and I am not giving you a pass. I am not giving you a pass for explaining that you tolerate me, while at the same time denying that my family has a right to exist. I do not give you permission to say you have me as a "gay friend" when you cast a vote against my family, and my rights."
Take this statement and apply it to ENDA and the right of transpeople to be protected in the workplace instead of marriage and you'll have a very clear picture why transfolks and our allies feel the way we do about you folks.
Thanks, Joe. You said it as well or perhaps even better than any of us ever could.
~~~~~
Monica Helms - I agree with Becky. It doesn't feel so good when others are trying to invalidate YOUR humanity. Remember this moment in time, because when ENDA comes back, you don't want to be eating these words. Laptops are hard to digest.
I got a fifth of Southern Comfort for you. Drink it in good health.
So far, HRC hasn't won a single anti-gay marriage ballot measure, and there's been over 20 losses. A few years ago, Arizona voted one down, but a gay Republican named Steve May really ran that winning campaign. So what's the deal with the email?
To be honest, I think Solmonese was trying to spin the gay community away from last night's debacle for the movement, and, as a major player in that movement, he didn't want us looking at him or the HRC. Solmonese also wanted me to keep donating, which was asked of me at the very bottom of the email. It makes a thinking man start to wonder when enough is enough.
One thing is clear, though. The gay rights movement needs to take a serious look at itself. Gay activists, who I mostly admire, can't keep blaming evangelical Christians for every loss. It's like the Boston Red Sox blaming the New York Yankees for being too good all of those years and not doing anything about it. Someone in the front office needs to get fired, the line up needs to be shuffled, new players need to be brought in, and we need to start winning a few championships. Pronto!
* GetReligion.org: The evolution of a story - Talks about the back story of why LGBT people are so angry at the LDS church.
Utah's growing tourism industry and the star-studded Sundance Film Festival are being targeted for a boycott by bloggers, gay rights activists and others seeking to punish the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for its aggressive promotion of California's ban on gay marriage.
It could be a heavy price to pay. Tourism brings in $6 billion a year to Utah, with world-class skiing, spectacular red-rock country and the film festival founded by Robert Redford among popular tourist draws.
More than 3,000 people swarmed downtown Salt Lake City to march past the LDS temple and church headquarters, protesting Mormon involvement in the campaign for California's Proposition 8. The measure, which defined marriage as exclusively between a man and a woman, passed this week.
...A sea of signs in City Creek Park, where the march began, screamed out messages including, "I didn't vote on your marriage," "Mormons once persecuted . . . Now persecutors," and "Jesus said love everyone." Others read, "Proud of my two moms" and "Protect traditional marriage. Ban divorce."
...Across the street on North Temple, a group of about 50 - the majority not LDS members - defended the church's support of the successful ballot measure. "The people voted," they shouted at the protesters. "YOU are intolerant!"
Others screamed: "Marriage is between a man and woman. You'll never be a man and woman!"
Energized by a comeback win, conservative activists want to apply the same formula they used to outlaw same-sex marriage in California to prevent other states from recognizing gay unions and President-elect Barack Obama from expanding the rights of gays and lesbians.
Leaders of the successful Proposition 8 campaign say an unusual coalition of evangelical Christians, Mormons and Roman Catholics built a majority at the polls Tuesday by harnessing the organizational muscle of churches to a mainstream message about what school children might be taught about gay relationships if the ban failed.
Same-sex marriage bans also won in Arizona and Florida. But in putting together the California victory, the coalition overcame opposition from the state's political establishment and assumptions about how voters in the famously tolerant state would respond to taking away the rights the state's highest court granted this spring.
We have the first black president. While the night was a historic win for minorities, it also saw another group of minorities dealt with a major blow in California with the passage of Proposition 8, an anti-gay marriage initiative on the ballot in Tuesday's election.
President-Elect Barack Obama won California overwhelmingly on Tuesday. But his victory brought an overwhelming number of African-American voters to the polls, who are generally seen as the reason Prop. 8 passed.
...As a black gay man, this troubled me two fold. On one end, I'm supposed to be joyous and ecstatic over this momentous win. On the other end, I'm sad that this wasn't a victory for gays and lesbians in California. Like anyone else, I want marriage rights to extend to us all.
But unlike a lot of stories I've seen, I refuse to blame blacks or Obama. However, it is time to get real...
For Trebor Healey, a 46-year-old gay man from Glendora, Tuesday's election was bittersweet.
He was thrilled that the nation elected its first African American president. But he was disappointed that black voters, traditionally among the most reliably liberal in the state, voted overwhelmingly to ban same-sex marriage.
He understands that there are differences between the civil rights battles of blacks and gays: For one thing, he notes, gay people have a much easier time blending in. Still, he says, he thinks it's sad that "people do not equate one civil rights struggle with another."
I am a perfect example of why the fight against Proposition 8, which amends the state Constitution to ban same-sex marriage, failed to win black support.
I am black. I am a political activist who cares deeply about social justice issues. I am a lesbian. This year, I canvassed the streets of South Los Angeles and Compton, knocking on doors, talking politics to passers-by and working as I never had before to ensure a large voter turnout among African Americans. But even I wasn't inspired to encourage black people to vote against the proposition.
Why? Because I don't see why the right to marry should be a priority for me or other black people. Gay marriage? Please. At a time when blacks are still more likely than whites to be pulled over for no reason, more likely to be unemployed than whites, more likely to live at or below the poverty line, I was too busy trying to get black people registered to vote, period; I wasn't about to focus my attention on what couldn't help but feel like a secondary issue...
Obviously, there's lots more out there, so this is obviously just a sampling. And, I don't believe the discussion is even close to over -- I believe we're going to be hearing about Prop 8, and what Prop 8's passage means, for years to come.
